windows 8! It suck it sucks it sucks, Ohhhh did I forget to say it sucks. I love windows 7 I will NOT go with windows 8. I will become a Linux power user before I switch to windows 8. The user interface is good for a tablet or phone but not for a desktop PC.
PJC

Max, you should get a WindowsRT tablet device and say what you think. Personally I only found the Metro UI usable.
But there is a weird mix of the Metro and the old desktop mode. I can't really tell wich is on top of wich.
You really get annoyed when opening an app that opens the old desktop, and they have the same old windows file explorer that may work for gnome fingers, but not mine.
Also the internet explorer seems to come in two variants. One for the dektop mode and one for the metro. Did they just merge 2 OS's?

I'm a big fan of Win 7 (can't believe I said that!) I've been using Win 8 now for a few months as has my nephew (on ocassional visits.)
He is 8. I am 56. I envy the fluid way in which he "intutively" finds his way around.
It is telling that those of us who claim with pride our long experience with computers are also the ones most critical of the "intuitive" claim. Be a kid again. You might learn some new tricks!

30+ years in computers. One thing I've always found with Microsoft software is that they sure leave lots of room for other people's software to fix their messes (misses?). There are a number of free, and for a price, "apps" that put the Win 7 Start button back along with other tweaks (remember TweakUI?). It won't take long for someone to fix most of the Win 8 warts. I stayed on XP as long as I could but found Win 7 relatively painless.

I agree with the article.
I hate windows 8. The issue is not even whether you are a content consumer or creator, but rather whether you want to be productive in a myriad of ways. Well, Windows 8 just get in the way.
Never under estimate the potential of Microsoft to screw things up.

Windows 2000 is the only version of Windows I ever liked. XP made it harder to launch programs and W7 has all sorts of glitz that just gets in the way.
So I followed Microsoft's implicit advice and switched over to GNU/Linux.

If you want people to try something new, you invite them, you don't force them.
The smartest thing Microsoft could have done was to have Windows 8 open up to a desktop, then allow people to open up a Metro window...if they want to.
At first, they'll work as usual. Eventually curiosity will overcome them (or their kids will bug them: "You should try it. It's cool!"), and they will try it out. They'll probably even learn to like some of the new features.
I'm predicting that they do this in their next Windows 8 release.
Considering Microsoft used to be known for their useability labs, I'm surprised they didn't learn this lesson the easy way, rather than the hard way (with reduced sales from bewildered users).

I don't know if I will buy this new system. From commends I know the ordinary users do not like to learn new functions and most likely adapt themself to no changing conditions.
But every time microsoft shows their new version, there will be many changes to fit the young man or new learners.
This seems that the world is belong to the young, to the new, to the change.

There are a few problems with Windows 8. I don't think most of we techies are "resistant to change"; we tend, more often than not, to be neophiles. But change isn't a universal good... it's a vector. And in this case, it's change in the wrong direction, for creative users.
The stuff you get first is the first problem. The tiles might seem cute, but mixing informational content with a program launcher just seems to me to codify the terrible mess you find on lazy Windows users' desktops. Worse yet, even at the tablet level, the UI just isn't intuitive. Of course I could learn it... but this is supposed to be a UI you just "get".. that's the whole point of de-evolving our UI tech for fingers and consumers.
Compare it to Android or iOS... the latter is austere, but so simple pretty much anyone can pick it up and use it. The former has more options, a bit less polish, but again, it's obvious (in fact, I'm writing this on an Android tablet).
It gets worse when that tablet UI moves to the desktop. It's bad with touch, worse with a mouse. This is already leading to bad ideas, like vertical touchscreens on desktops.. those "more experienced" in the crowd here might recall that screen input was tried, and rejected, in the early 80s... on both CAD systems and some personal computers, like the Commodore 64. It worked well... light pens, earlier touchscreens, etc. But on the desktop, way too much stress on the arms, versus horizontal input.
And for creative types, the "Modern" (formerly Metro) UI is a step back almost to the bad old single tasking days. Content creation, whether schematic capture, PCB layout, video or audio production, multimedia authoring, etc. all involve the synthesis of a new thing from a variety of resources. Forcing the user to a single app per screen is just insane... I rarely have fewer than a dozen windows open, and its usually important that they share the same visual context... also why I have two monitors.

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